Sound Off: The Sprint Customer Blacklist

In today’s column, I discuss Sprint Nextel’s decision to terminate customers who called customer service too often. Sprint sent letters like this one to about 1,000 subscribers. It has 54 million in all, so the letters don’t represent a major purge. Nevertheless, it’s generated a wave of bad publicity.

If you have a cell phone, if you’ve ever tried to figure out the billing, the contract details or the services, you know that it often takes multiple calls to sort out.

Sprint, which has been signing up new customers at a slower rate than AT&T and Verizon, clearly wants to focus on subscribers who will use more profitable add-on services, rather than badger customer service reps with questions. The company’s logic seems to be that a more sophisticated customer is a more satisfied customer.

If you’re a Sprint subscriber and you didn’t get one of these letters, there is one advantage. You now know what it takes to get out of your contract without a cancellation fee — about 40 customer service calls a month.

I have to wonder if the customer-culling was worth the backlash. More important, though, it raises questions about what other habits Sprint will decide it won’t tolerate in its customers.

Is this a smart move, or will Sprint regret it? Should companies cull problem customers? Is the customer always right?